Read Online Blood Trust by Eric Van Lustbader - Free Book Online Page B

hooded, as if she was having trouble staying awake, but this only made her seem sultry. She looked vaguely Eurasian. Her long hair had lost its sheen to sweat; it lay lankly on the pillow in thick, Medusan coils. Still and all, Jack observed, she was an exceptionally beautiful young woman.
    He sat on a painted metal chair and introduced himself. “Vera, would you tell me what happened last night?”
    “I … I don’t know.” Her voice was soft and husky. “I went to bed as usual, read for a bit, took my pill, as usual, and went to sleep.” She licked her dry lips. “The next thing I knew I woke up here.”
    “Alli was in the room when you went to sleep?”
    “Yes.”
    “And while you were reading?”
    “Yes.”
    “Did you two talk at all?”
    “Before I went to the bathroom we were talking about…” Her brow crinkled. “I can’t remember about what. Boys, maybe.”
    “About Billy?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe.”
    “And after you came back from the bathroom?”
    Vera shook her head and a lock of hair fell across her cheek.
    Jack sat for a moment more. He smiled at her. “I’m sorry for what happened.”
    Vera seemed not to have heard him. She licked her lips again. “I want to see Alli.”
    “I’ll speak to Commander Fellows.” Jack rose. “By the way, what medication are you taking?”
    “Crestor. I have high cholesterol.”
    Jack nodded and smiled. “Thank you, Vera.”
    *   *   *
    O N THE way out of the infirmary, Jack encountered Naomi.
    “DNA is going to take at least a week,” she said, “but the forensic team found Alli’s fingerprints on the water glass beside Vera’s bed.”
    “Anyone else’s?”
    “Just Alli’s.”
    Jack’s cell phone buzzed, and then Dennis Paull was speaking rapidly and tensely in his ear. He strode down the hall, away from Naomi and McKinsey, who had appeared.
    “A new position?” Jack said after a moment. “Is Crawford kicking you out?”
    “Not exactly.” Paull further explained the changes. “You’re coming with me, Jack. I’m pulling all the details together. At midnight you and I are going to fly to Macedonia, then trek west into the mountains to a shithole called Tetovo, where we will terminate this sonuvabitch Arian Xhafa.”
    Jack bit back a protest. Though Paull had made it clear that he was sympathetic to Alli’s plight, Jack suspected he’d simply argue that there were other people—Naomi Wilde chief among them—who were perfectly adequate to being Alli’s advocate. Besides, in Harrison Jenkins she had one of the most savvy criminal attorneys on the planet. Jack could hear him now: Forget it, Alli’s in good hands. The trouble was, that was only half true. No one knew Alli the way he did, and she wasn’t about to open up to anyone else, Naomi included. And keeping silent wouldn’t help her cause one iota.
    Instead, he said, “Just like that? From what you’ve told me he’s exceptionally well defended and well armed. He won’t be easy to kill.”
    Paull laughed. “I may have spent the last several years behind a desk, Jack, but believe me when I tell you that I still have a trick or two up my sleeve.”

F IVE
    A LLI , WALKING slowly around her uncle’s study, spent the slowly ticking seconds dragging her fingertips across the tops of books, the contours of artifacts and souvenirs, the outlines of framed photos of her uncle with presidents past and present. She paused at a photo of the two brothers and stared at her father. He was smiling into the camera, his hand on his older brother’s shoulder. Judging by the hazy mountains in the background, they were out west somewhere, doubtless at one of her uncle’s ranches. He clutched a ten-gallon hat in one fist.
    She was certain she ought to feel something at the sight of her father’s face—a sense of remorse, of pain, of a space inside her into which he had once warmly nestled—but she felt nothing. It was as if her heart had been turned to wood, burned to ashes in a